Buyers solicitor slow, afraid sale may fall through

Dwsww

I'm currently in the process of buying a new property. In the chain it's just the buyer of my place, and me, the sellers of the property I'm buying have no onward chain. We're 9 weeks into the process and things are moving along nicely with my solicitor, however my buyers solicitor doesn't appear to have done a single thing.

My solicitors have chased them for initial enquiries 6 times and not had a response, I'm not even sure if they've responded to a single communication from my solicitor.

I asked my buyer if he could nudge his solicitor to get things moving, which he did… it took 2 attempts and 8 days for them to get back to my buyer, he then informed me that the solicitor had raised enquiries that day. This was 4 working days ago. This morning my solicitor informed me they still hadn't received the enquiries. 

Did my buyers solicitor lie to him? How can I pressure them into getting something done?

I'm afraid that if the sellers of the property I'm buying don't see progress lower down the chain soon they may pull out of the sale.

eddddy

Are you selling through a conventional estate agent (who gets paid on completion)?

If so, you should get them on the case. They should progress the sale - I.e. chase your buyer, and find out what the problem is.

Dwsww

eddddy said:

Are you selling through a conventional estate agent (who gets paid on completion)?

If so, you should get them on the case. They should progress the sale - I.e. chase your buyer, and find out what the problem is.

Good question, I should have mentioned this in the original post.

I won't go into specifics but I don't have an estate agent for the sale of my property. I would have preferred it if I did have one.

I have direct contact with the buyer, I feel awful for having to pressure them myself

housebuyer143

We had a few buyers for our place as it fell through twice, and one solicitor literally wouldn't make any contact until they were ready to send every enquiry at once. So this means they waited for the mortgage offer, then they reviewed the title and all the paperwork from my solicitor and then reviewed all the searches before sending them all over at once. 
This probably took 2 months+ and it was incredibly frustrating. 

Each solicitor works differently and it might just be this is how they do it.

Tiglet2

housebuyer143 said:

We had a few buyers for our place as it fell through twice, and one solicitor literally wouldn't make any contact until they were ready to send every enquiry at once. So this means they waited for the mortgage offer, then they reviewed the title and all the paperwork from my solicitor and then reviewed all the searches before sending them all over at once. 
This probably took 2 months+ and it was incredibly frustrating. 

Each solicitor works differently and it might just be this is how they do it.

I agree.  A lot of conveyancing solicitors try to limit their work on each file by not raising enquiries until they have received each piece of information they've asked for, from the other third parties.  If the solicitor has taken on a lot of clients, this is often the only way they can handle volume work. 

Nine weeks also isn't that long, considering the buyer's solicitor won't count any of the weeks before the draft contract pack is received by them.  Before that point, they will know nothing about the property and will simply wait for the seller's solicitor to provide them with the initial documents, which indicates that the sellers are committed to the sale.  

I wonder if the buyers have paid any monies to their solicitor to start the searches yet because searches won't be ordered until they have been paid for.

Hoenir

Dwsww said:

eddddy said:

Are you selling through a conventional estate agent (who gets paid on completion)?

If so, you should get them on the case. They should progress the sale - I.e. chase your buyer, and find out what the problem is.

I have direct contact with the buyer, I feel awful for having to pressure them myself

When was their mortgage approved and searches requested? You mention 9 weeks. However 2 weeks of Xmas can be disregarded. 7 weeks isn't long at all. 

NameUnavailable

Are you sure your buyers are serious about going ahead?

prettyandfluffy

NameUnavailable said:

Are you sure your buyers are serious about going ahead?

We had a buyer whose solicitor appeared to be slow and incompetent, when we really lost patience it came to light that the buyer was instructing them to go slow so they could get their funds in place (it was a cash purchase).  The sale went through.